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Friday, July 13, 2012

Ripping Carovella by Kim Zimring

The narrator rips memories from heads talented people--people who want to keep their memories in order to play music or write stories, but they will be generously compensated.

Ironically, Rex, the narrator, married one of those talents who’d had her memories ripped: Carovella. Carovella is not passive about her loss; rather, she hires another ripper to give back her writing abilities, but when her husband fails to back her up (because art is dangerous due to men like him), she gets ripped again. This does not deter Carovella, but her desire for art only gets her and her husband in deeper.

A well-evoked tale examining the resistance of loved ones who hate the art that motivates artists. The irony that a ripper married a ripped, however cool, is difficult to understand how it occurred. While the science of memory extraction seems unnecessarily cruel (especially in light of functional MRI), the process makes for good story.